Donald Don McLean (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the songs American Pie and Vincent. McLeans grandfather and father were also named Donald McLean. The Buccis, the family of McLeans mother, Elizabeth, came from Abruzzo in central Italy. They left Italy and settled in Port Chester, New York, at the end of the 19th century. He has other extended family in Los Angeles and Boston. As a teenager, McLean became interested in folk music, particularly the Weavers 1955 recording At Carnegie Hall. Childhood asthma meant that McLean missed long periods of school, particularly music lessons, and although he slipped back in his studies, his love of music was allowed to flourish. He often performed shows for family and friends. By age 16 he had bought his first guitar (a Harmony acoustic archtop with a sunburst finish) and began making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with folk singer Erik Darling, a latter-day member of the Weavers. McLean recorded his first studio sessions (with singer Lisa Kindred) while still in prep school. McLean graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1963, and briefly attended Villanova University, dropping out after four months. While at Villanova he became friends with singer/songwriter Jim Croce. After leaving Villanova, McLean became associated with famed folk music agent Harold Leventhal for several months before teaming up with personal manager Herb Gart for 18 years. For the next six years he performed at venues and events including the Bitter End and the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Newport Folk Festival, the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Concurrently, McLean attended night school at Iona College and received a bachelors degree in business administration in 1968. He turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favor of pursuing a career as a singer/songwriter, performing at such venues as Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York. Later in 1968, with the help of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, McLean began reaching a wider public, with visits to towns up and down the Hudson River. He learned the art of performing from his friend and mentor Pete Seeger. McLean accompanied Seeger on his Clearwater boat trip up the Hudson River in 1969 to raise awareness about environmental pollution in the river. During this time McLean wrote songs that would appear on his first album, Tapestry. McLean co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Pete Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang Shenandoah on the 1974 Clearwater album. McLeans magnum opus, American Pie, is a sprawling, impressionistic ballad inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. The song popularized the expression The Day the Music Died in reference to this event. The song was recorded on May 26, 1971, and a month later received its first radio airplay on New Yorks WNEW-FM and WPLJ-FM to mark the closing of Fillmore East, the famous New York concert hall. American Pie reached number one on the Hot 100 from 15 January - 5 February 1972 and remains McLeans most successful single release. The single also topped the Billboard Easy Listening survey. With a total running time of 8:36 encompassing both sides of the single, it is also the longest song to reach No. 1. Some stations played only part one of the original split-sided single release. WCFL DJ Bob Dearborn unraveled the lyrics and first published his interpretation on January 7, 1972, eight days before the song reached No. 1 nationally Numerous other interpretations, which together largely converged on Dearborns interpretation, quickly followed. McLean declined to say anything definitive about the lyrics until 1978. Since then McLean has stated that the lyrics are also somewhat autobiographical and present an abstract story of his life from the mid-1950s until the time he wrote the song in the late 1960s. In 2001 American Pie was voted No. 5 in a poll of the 365 Songs of the Century compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. The top five: Over the Rainbow, written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Yip Harburg (performed by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz); White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin (best-known performance by Bing Crosby); This Land Is Your Land, written and performed by Woody Guthrie; Respect, written by Otis Redding (best-known performance by Aretha Franklin); and American Pie.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 23:54:12 +0000
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